April 2008 Archives
Don't Waste Your Life
April 17, 2008 by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Projects
The book Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper has turned into a movement and rallying cry of sorts. We worked with two designers to put together ideas and concepts for how the Don't Waste Your Life message could be communicated in multiple mediums (web sites, videos, ads, posters, book covers, etc.). Monkey Outta Nowhere offered copy and ideas to cement the visual concepts, as well as a much needed outside perspective.
Since our work was primarily in the concept stage, the results have not been fully integrated into the Don't Waste Your Life marketing plan. But they were well received and are beginning to show up in Don't Waste Your Life materials.
Monkey Outta Nowhere Redesigns. Again.
April 11, 2008 by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Company News
One of the hardest things about helping others communicate is figuring out how to help yourself communicate. It's like the old saying about the cobbler's children being barefoot. Sometimes we're too busy with clients to worry about ourselves.
That's definitely been true with Monkey Outta Nowhere and something we're trying to remedy. We've reworked our home page (again) and de-coupled our blog from the personal blog of our head monkey, Kevin D. Hendricks. We're trying to highlight the projects we've done on the homepage instead of a bloated, out of date portfolio.
We're making it less reliant on frequent updates (less face it, we don't have very frequent updates) and putting the focus on the work we do. Hopefully we won't be redesigning next year.
Start Seeing Art
April 11, 2008 by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Projects
In late 2007 Monkey Outta Nowhere launched Start Seeing Art, a local site that maps and identifies public art in the Twin Cities. The project utilizes Google maps and Flickr images, providing descriptions, pictures and detailed locations of public art installations. While still in its infancy (especially design-wise), the site has already been highlighted on the local blog MNSpeak and has mapped over 100 pieces of public art.
The site continues to grow, thanks to a community that shares photos and information.
Church Marketing Sucks
April 6, 2008 by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Projects
Churches have a communications problem. They claim to have the greatest story ever told, but they don't know how to tell it. Enter Church Marketing Sucks. The blog began in 2004, challenging churches to communicate their message effectively.
Our own Kevin D. Hendricks has written more than 700 blog entries for the site and serving as the site's managing editor. The site averages 40,000 unique visits per month and has been mentioned in The Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age, HOW magazine, The Detroit Free Press, Red Herring and more.
Trout Lake Camps: Project 365
April 6, 2008 by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Projects
Minnesota's Trout Lake Camps celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2007 in grand style and used the opportunity to secure funding into the future. They came up with a fund-raising plan called Project 365, an effort to find 365 people willing to donate $1 a day. Taylor Design Works helmed the project and together we created a 32-page booklet that explained the camp's history, legacy and needs going into the future, and then challenged people to join Project 365.
The project involved working out a structure for the booklet with Taylor Design Works, researching Trout Lake history, telling individual stories and putting together factoids about the camp. The final product has been called one of the best communication pieces in Trout Lake's history.
Foursquare NextGen Summit '07
April 6, 2008 by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Projects
At the end of 2007 the Foursquare Church, a charismatic Christian denomination, held its first youth event in more than 10 years. Thousands of young people came from across the country to ring in 2008 at the Foursquare NextGen Summit '07. The event focused on three causes: embracing orphans, stopping human trafficking and fighting poverty.
Monkey Outta Nowhere came on board a year before the event to put their vision into words and their marketing plan into action. We wrote copy for the web sites, e-mail newsletters, promotional materials and more. We helped plan and execute two different designs of a Wordpress-based blog and explored online promotion on MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. We even went well outside our area of expertise and created two low budget promo videos.
Our own Kevin D. Hendricks also attended the event and wrote a wrap-up article for Foursquare's Advance magazine.
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